S.W. (Sonnie) Hereford IV holds the hand of his father Dr. S. W. Hereford III just after Alabama state troopers denied entrance to Fifth Avenue Elementary School in Huntsville on Sept. 6, 1963. Hereford successfully enrolled, integrating Huntsville schools despite opposition from Montgomery, three days later. Huntsville City Schools continues to operate under a 1970 federal ruling in that case, Hereford v Huntsville, to end what had been a dual school system based on race.

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Across Alabama, from Tuscaloosa County to Jefferson County to Huntsville city, federal attorneys continue to monitor racial balance in 46 school systems.

That's Jackson County and Sheffield, Tarrant and Russellville, Hoover and Homewood, Anniston and Guntersville. All remain under judicial order to erase signs of a dual system based on race, and those orders still influence where communities build schools, add bus routes or assign teachers

Today Alabama and Mississippi find themselves tied for the most systems under a desegregation order monitored by the U.S. Department of Justice. That's 46 active cases apiece.

Just four years ago, Georgia led the nation. But Georgia has retired 14 cases in the last four years. During that time, Alabama has mostly sat unchanged

But Huntsville hopes to soon follow the lead of other systems, and has hired a ringer from Washington to speed up the process.

"Way past time," said city school board member David Blair. "It's the right thing for the kids, right thing for the community and the right thing for the city."

Two generations after the orders arose, the U.S. Supreme Court has scaled back thinking on how much a school system can do to influence racial inequities. Across the country, from Miami to Kansas City, federal judges have ended the old orders, closing more than 175 desegregation cases in the last eight years.

The Huntsville board, hoping in part to improve the city's image, has now decided that ending the order should be a top priority and has made that a performance goal for new Superintendent Casey Wardynski. Wardynski this summer brought in Maree Sneed, a Maryland educator turned Washington lawyer and desegregation specialist.

Specifically, Blair and other board members believe they can end, or at least reduce, the need for federal approval of new zone lines, of new construction and even of new academic programs. The Justice Department once blocked a new high school for south Huntsville, required racial quotas to allow the creation of Hampton Cove Middle and more recently fought unsuccessfully against turning Williams Middle from a tech magnet to a neighborhood school.

For certain, without the court order, the flow of students between Huntsville schools would slow. The court order has guaranteed majority to minority transfers, which allow a black student at a majority black school to switch to a mostly white school, and a white student at a majority white school to switch to a predominantly black school. The system gets more than 100 requests per year from some high schools, such as Butler and Johnson. (Given demographic concerns of 1970, Huntsville has long coded students as black and non-black.)

Not everyone agrees it would be beneficial to end such programs or eliminate the federal oversight. Bob Harrison, who represents north Huntsville on the Madison County Commission, said he will fight efforts to end the order. He said he still sees signs of a dual system, as mostly white schools in south Huntsville often rank among the top-scoring schools in the state, and some of the mostly minority schools in north Huntsville have long been flagged for low test scores.

Madison County Commissioner Bob Harrison (Huntsville Times)

"What I see is a dual school system, two separate school systems, one in the south and one in the north," said Harrison. "A dual school system is one that is black and white separately, one that has different levels of learning and achievement. That has not been remedied."

He said he'd settle for separate but equal, but he doesn't see that either. He said he will actively oppose efforts to end the order, even if that means going straight to the Justice Department, or to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which is also a plaintiff in the Huntsville case.

Sneed in Washington said this week that every system is different and faces different hurdles based on the language in the original order. For example, In North Alabama, 28 of the systems operate under a desegregation order in the consolidated case known as Lee v. Macon County. That includes Limestone County, Madison County, Shelby County, Anniston and Sheffield. Another 13 systems, including Huntsville, have their own individual court order monitored by the Justice Department. These include Russellville and Jefferson County, Colbert County and Athens.

And a few systems, such as Lawrence County, go uncounted on federal lists. These systems have truly unique desegregation orders where the Justice Department never got involved. In Lawrence County, the case is monitored by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Huntsville board president Laurie McCaulley (Huntsville Times)

"I love the idea of hiring Maree. And I support it 100 percent," said board president Laurie McCaulley, the only African American representative on the Huntsville school board. McCaulley last year voiced reservations about seeking unitary status, which signifies a former dual system has been declared whole. McCaulley said the system still has work to do to eliminate cross-town imbalances.

"(Sneed) was direct, that you're not going to get unitary status without giving up something," said McCaulley. But she said the new digital initiative, awarding laptops to each student, helped standardize the curriculum between schools in different parts of Huntsville. She also said Wardynski has moved some white principals north and some black principals south.

"I don't want us just to get unitary status, I want us to deserve it," said McCaulley.

Harrison disagreed that the curriculum had grown more equal between schools, saying many children in north Huntsville lacked the necessary Internet connection to work at home. "I think in the last nine weeks in north Huntsville there has been marginal, if any, learning at all."

But the Supreme Court has begun to find many issues beyond a school board's control. In 1991, the Supreme Court ruled that a school system could not be forced to fix neighborhood housing patterns. A year later, the Court ruled that federal oversight should be temporary, and that a system could reclaim local control if the racial imbalance resulted from "private choices." In 1995, the Court found that federal oversight doesn't have to continue even if minority students post lower test scores.

The rest of the country, from Miami to Kansas City, has been moving on and retiring the orders. The Justice Department has 197 desegregation orders now, down from 234 four years ago.

By 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court even rejected plans of two unitary school systems, in Seattle and Louisville, to try to improve racial balance when determining where to enroll transfer students. Yet the ruling expressly sets apart Huntsville and other systems under the old orders, placing them on a separate and otherwise outdated legal track. These systems remain required to consider racial balance in student transfers, as well in most areas of schooling.

"I think one of the top priorities will be diversifying the teachers and that's going to be the hardest thing," said McCaulley of what comes next for Huntsville.

J.R. Brooks, the longtime Huntsville board attorney, has often said the foremost obstacle to unitary status in Huntsville could be having too many black teachers in mostly black schools, and too few in mostly white schools.

Huntsville school board attorney J.R. Brooks

Sneed this week declined to discuss specific remedies awaiting Huntsville. She also declined to speak about other cases she has worked on. Her firm's online biography names only her desegregation work in Baton Rouge. So far, Huntsville has paid Sneed for two days of work, $2,448 for July 31 and $2,076.75 for Sept. 14.

In 2007, Brooks had started the arduous legal process of seeking unitary status, firing off several boxes of statistical and demographic information to attorneys at the Justice Department for an initial review. Years went by without response. In 2011, the Justice Department sent an eight-page letter filled with examples of why Huntsville should not expect to be declared unitary anytime soon. Those ranged from too many white students in advanced courses to schools being "racially identifiable" through both students and faculties.

In recent weeks, said Brooks, the Justice Department has requested new data. Desegregation cases can involve examinations of several factors such as student ratios by advanced courses, extracurricular programs, discipline numbers, special education placement, busing distances by race and teaching staffs by race.

"I think they are going to be surprised by some of the changes," said Brooks.

That's because Wardynski went ahead and started a two-tier process to balance the ratios among faculties. Starting this summer, all new hires are screened by a central committee whose members do not consider race, said Wardynski. Once a teacher is deemed qualified for the system, race may then be used to help decide placement, he said.

He believes the new system has already increased the number of Huntsville schools with an acceptably diverse faculty. According to Wardynski's count the city has moved from 9 out of 46, to 12 out of 46 schools that are no longer racially identifiable by the faculty. For his goal, he's using the racial breakdown of qualified and accepted teaching applicants, plus or minus 15 percentage points.

In 2011, Mountain Gap Middle in south Huntsville had no black teachers, while across town in north Huntsville 83 percent of the teachers at Davis Hills Middle were black. At Ed White Middle, 88 percent were black. Among the high schools, at Grissom High just 10 percent of teachers were black, while at Johnson 77 percent were.

He hasn't steered the middle much, but the extreme cases have faded. Mountain Gap Middle remains the least balanced, but now 4 percent of teachers are black. Davis Hills dropped to 75 percent black. Johnson is at 64 percent now and Grissom rose to 16 percent.

Superintendent Casey Wardynski (Huntsville Times)

In part, said Wardynski, that's also because the central office used race in determining placement for scores of veteran teachers transferred out of three schools subject to "restarts" over the summer.

Wardynski also pointed to his new technology initiative, putting laptops in the hands of every student, as a way to balance curricular opportunities.

"We're walking the walk. We're saying we want to improve education across the system for all kids," said board member Blair.

Yet Huntsville in August still had to go to court to talk about racial balance. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund wanted some clarity on student transfers, and the school system and the Justice Department agreed. The old desegregation transfers now take highest priority in Huntsville. A majority-to-minority transfer must be granted before a transfer under No Child Left Behind.

That means available space goes to students seeking to improve racial balance, instead of to students fleeing a poor performing school. The system held the opposite view last year, giving preference to No Child Left Behind transfers. Wardynski said the legal question basically put the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution against regulations of the U.S. Department of Education. All agreed the Constitution wins, he said.

"In a lot of instances, people can do the same thing," said Norm Chachkin, the longtime attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the Huntsville case, who raised the issue. He said the system needed to be sure that a No Child Left Behind transfer didn't claim an available seat that could be used to improve racial balance.

In practice, the change makes it less likely that a white or Hispanic student would be able to earn a transfer out of Butler or Johnson and into Huntsville or Grissom or elsewhere. It wouldn't affect scores of black students requesting to leave Butler and Johnson each year.

Meanwhile, Alabama not only leads the nation for active cases watched by the Justice Department, but North Alabama is now ground zero for the old cases. The northern district of Alabama, from Jefferson County through Huntsville, has 41 active cases. No other federal jurisdiction comes close.

There are only five active cases in the rest of the state, four in the Black Belt in the middle Alabama district and just one, Choctaw County, in the southern district.

Sneed said she couldn't comment on why some areas have more lingering cases. Brooks said he didn't know why federal oversight was so concentrated in North Alabama. Chachkin said there's no particular reason North Alabama stands apart, continuing to fight dozens of legal battles from 1970. "It's just the way it's shaken out," Chachkin said.